Портрет Алетты Ханеманс (1606-1653)

This is one half of a marriage. Aletta Hanemans was 19 when Frans Hals painted her in 1625, a year after she married Jacob Olycan, a wealthy brewer in Haarlem, and her portrait was made to hang beside his, the two of them turned slightly toward each other as a matched pair. Almost everything she wears carries the message of the wedding. There is the ring, the fine bridal gloves in her hand, and across her chest a stomacher stiff with gold thread and embroidered flowers, the kind of piece a bride wore. The lace and gold brocade follow Spanish fashion, the height of expense in the Dutch Republic then. Hals catches the sheen of all that silk with the quick, loaded brushstrokes that made his name.